Dean Smith wants Norwich City to embrace the expectation as the Championship club to beat this season.

The Canaries have been installed as favourites by many tipsters before Saturday’s opener at Cardiff City. In Smith they have a coach who has won promotion from the second tier, and a squad with plenty of title-winning experience.

“I want to see players expressing themselves,” he said. “Is there going to be expectation on us? Of course there is but there'll be expectation on every club. We've got to enjoy having that on us and start well. I want to see what we've been seeing in training.

“You can sense a little bit of nervousness between the players, not knowing whether they're going to start or not. In pre-season I'm everybody's friend, because I don't have to pick a team to win three points. There's certainly a different feel about the week leading up to the start. But it's one of excitement as well, because the season is about to get underway.

“I would say 80pc of the time I concentrate on what we're going to do anyway, because that's the one thing that we can control. We've got really good analysis departments here who give me and my coaching staff all the numbers and paperwork that we want to read through on the opposition.

"We will probably come up against a lot more styles than you would do in the Premier League.

"There'll be a lot of teams that may sit off against us. There'll be some teams that will come and press us and we've got to find ways of being effective. We're going to go and compete in both boxes, because there is a physical element to some games as well at this level. It is having the full set of golf clubs in the bag.”

Smith’s dossiers on Steve Morison’s Bluebirds may be thicker than he even would like, after a sizeable player turnover this summer at the Welsh club under the one-time Norwich striker.

“We're going into a little bit of the unknown. Not with the Championship, because we know the Championship, we've been there before,” he said. “I believe Cardiff have made more changes than anyone in the league this summer. We've done as much homework as we can on their pre-season games.

"But when you have 13 new players, and I've been there before, I'm not sure Steve will know what he's best XI is straightaway. We have to plan for many things.”

Defensive duo Sam Byram (thigh) and Ben Gibson (calf) miss out. Captain Grant Hanley has been passed fit after his ankle injury scare at Celtic in the penultimate friendly.

Hanley was part of an international contingent who returned later to pre-season, after World Cup play-off games and Nations League commitments. Smith is mindful of the early workload on his key personnel.

“I feel for our international lads, because we've only had them for about three weeks. It's getting harder and harder for all the internationals, especially with the pandemic they've had no time off,” he said. “Fortunately, this season will be a little bit different in the fact that it's a World Cup and we have a four week break, which I'm sure the internationals who are not involved will welcome.

"But we also know the Championship is a long season, and we've got to cram the games in with four weeks less.

“Sam is back on the grass. He had a thigh strain, or some fibres that didn’t look good which showed up on a scan, so he had to rest, but he's back on the grass now. I fully expect him to be fit for the Wigan game.

"Gibbo felt his calf in Marseille. He came off at half-time. It wasn't planned to come off. He just felt it. A myofascial injury, which is the outer layer so, again, he'll be back on the grass from next week.”

Smith’s primary focus is ensuring Norwich get off on the right foot, but he will tune in with millions of others around the country on Sunday to back the Lionesses’ bid for Euro glory in a Wembley showdown with Germany.

“I have watched all the games so far and I am really pleased to see how they progressed,” he said. “They came through a really tough game against Spain, then a really good win against Sweden, and we wish them all well now.

"We're trying to grow our brand of women's football at the club, we have brought in Flo Allen and she's doing a sterling job at the moment and hopefully we can progress ourselves. We had that ambition when I was at Aston Villa to get into the Super League. This whole football club is behind the Lionesses.”